RSS leader Indresh under scanner for terror links

RSS national executive member Indresh is under the scanner for links with Ajmer Sharif blast accused.

advertisement

Dalip Singh

New Delhi

July 15, 2010

UPDATED: July 15, 2010 10:10 IST

Investigating agencies have zoomed in on a top Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) leader Indresh Kumar for his suspected links with Devender Gupta, a key accused in the Ajmer bomb blast case.

The Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had arrested Gupta, Chandrasekhar Borad and Lokesh Sharma on April 29 this year for their alleged involvement in the terror strike on the Ajmer Sharif shrine on October 11, 2007.

Following these arrests, the Uttar Pradesh ATS, the Maharashtra ATS and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chased leads emanating from RSS activist Gupta's interrogation to explore the Hindutva organisation's links with other unsolved blast cases such as Hyderabad (May 18, 2007) and Malegaon (September 29, 2008).

Indresh, an RSS national executive member, was on Gupta's contact list, sources in the investigative agencies said. He has been on their radar since then. The agencies are also trying to establish whether Indresh had a routine organisational link with Gupta or if he knew of the blast conspiracy. Despite several attempts to reach him via mobile phone on Wednesday, Indresh remained incommunicado. He also did not respond to any of the several text messages sent to his mobile phone.

He is popularly known as Indreshji in the Sangh Parivar, and is regarded as one of the organisation's chief strategists. He was allegedly responsible for the successful communalisation of the dispute over the Amarnath land grant dispute in 2008, planned and executed under the aegis of the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti.

Indresh was also allegedly the mastermind behind organising the Madhesis in Nepal as an anti-Maoist force. This was done soon after the Nepal Maoists were brought to the negotiation table. Operating out of Varanasi, Indresh wanted to organise the Madhesis as part of an RSS campaign to preserve Nepal's status as the world's only "Hindu Rashtra".

The Hindutva leader is also the brain behind the RSS Muslim Manch, an organisation meant to draw together "nationalist Muslims". Indresh claimed he organised a conference of close to 125 military officers sympathetic to his cause. He did not specify the number of retired and serving officers who were present at the event.

Indresh is not the only one under the scanner; investigating agencies are in the process of verifying the antecedents of around eight more people associated with right-wing organisations such as the VHP and the BJP, in addition to RSS.

Investigators said Gupta used three mobile phones to converse with leaders and activists of Hindutva organisations. When they analysed the call records of these phones, investigators found he was in touch with seven to eight persons associated with the RSS, VHP and BJP, who hail from Lucknow, Kanpur, Faizabad, Varanasi and Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh.

Acting on specific leads, the antiterrorism squads of Maharashtra, UP, Rajasthan and the CBI questioned RSS's former prant pracharak in Jharkhand Ashok Varshney and central committee member Ashok Berry several times starting June 21 at the ATS's Gomti Nagar office in Lucknow.

The UP ATS also confronted the two RSS leaders regarding their alleged association with Gupta.

This was to unravel the Ajmer and Hyderabad blasts conspiracy and also to establish whether Gupta had links in UP. Gupta has been trailed in Lucknow, Kanpur and Sitapur prior to his arrest by the Rajasthan ATS. During the questioning both Varshney and Berry acknowledged that they knew Gupta and that they had individual as well as joint meetings with him. Sources said Gupta had stayed with Varshney at RSS Bhavan in Kanpur. He was also allegedly provided with safe hideouts in Sitapur and at Model House in Lucknow.

Both Varshney and Berry reportedly said there was nothing wrong in knowing Gupta as he is an RSS worker and is a regular at Sangh functions. However, they both denied knowledge of Gupta's alleged plot to bomb Ajmer Sharif.

But investigators allege Varshney sourced and handed over two SIM cards - bought from Hyderabad and Ajmer - to Gupta. Varshney is said to have told investigators that he could not have purchased the SIM cards as he was not present at the two blast sites. The SIM cards may have been used to trigger the bombs planted in Ajmer and Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, a CBI team is in Hyderabad to probe Mecca Masjid blast case. The CBI believes that there are stark similarities between the mobile phone-detonated explosives used in Ajmer and Hyderabad.

CBI director Ashwani Kumar had recently said that " there is a definite link between the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts". He named another RSS activist Sunil Joshi, accusing him of " playing a key role in orchestrating the Ajmer blast? and a set of mobile SIM cards were used to activate the bombs first in Ajmer and then again in Hyderabad." Though he claimed that the CBI has not interrogated any RSS leader, sources insist that CBI sleuths were present during the three-day interrogation of Varshney, Berry and Gupta.

Sources also said more than 100 RSS activists may have been involved in the blasts conspiracies and the list of suspects directly involved may cross 30.

These investigations have put RSS in damage control mode.

Sources said that the Hindutva outfit may disown all those who are eventually found to have been involved in the conspiracies.